Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal republic in western-central Europe. Germany shares land borders with Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. Germany is known as one of the principle and leading states in the European Union and NATO. History Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century The assassination of Austria's crown prince on 28 June 1914 triggered World War I. After four years of warfare a general armistice ended the fighting on 11 November, and German troops returned home. In the German Revolution (November 1918), Kaiser Wilhelm II and all German ruling princes abdicated their positions and responsibilities. Germany's new political leadership signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Germany was declared a republic at the beginning of the German Revolution in November 1918. After a tumultuous period of bloody street fighting in the major industrial centers, the occupation of the Ruhr by Belgian and French troops and the rise of inflation culminating in the hyperinflation of 1922–23, a debt restructuring plan and the creation of a new currency in 1924 ushered in the Golden Twenties. The Nazi Party won the special federal election of 1932. After a series of unsuccessful cabinets, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in 1933.45 After the Reichstag Fire, a decree abrogated basic civil rights and within weeks the first Nazi concentration camp at Dachau opened. The Enabling Act of 1933 gave Hitler unrestricted legislative power; subsequently, his government established a centralized totalitarian state, withdrew from the League of Nations following a national referendum, and began military rearmament. In 1935, the regime withdrew from the Treaty of Versailles and introduced the Nuremberg Laws which targeted Jews and other minorities. Germany also reacquired control of the Saar in 1935, annexed Austria in 1938, and occupied Czechoslovakia in early 1939. Hitler's government signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact with Stalin and in late 1939 Germany and the Soviets invaded Poland. The United Kingdom and France then declared war on Germany, but not the Soviet Union, marking the beginning of World War II. Following Hitler's suicide during the Battle of Berlin, German armed forces surrendered on 8 May 1945, ending World War II in Europe. After the surrender of Germany, the remaining German territory and Berlin were partitioned by the Allies into four military occupation zones. West Germany was established as a federal parliamentary republic with a "social market economy". East Germany was an Eastern Bloc state under political and military control by the USSR via occupation forces and the Warsaw Pact. The united Germany is considered to be the enlarged continuation of the Federal Republic of Germany and not a successor state. As such, it retained all of West Germany's memberships in international organizations. Since reunification, Germany has taken a more active role in the European Union. Together with its European partners Germany signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, established the Eurozone in 1999, and signed the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. The Great Recession and Euro Collapse See Full Article: The Great Recession In August 2017, Angela Merkel announced that Germany and the Eurozone] had entered a recession. The recession was brought on by the collapse of markets around the world, coinciding with the price of oil skyrocketing due to American intervention in the Saudi Civil War. As one of the "core engine" states in the Eurozone, alongside France and Italy, Germany was heavily involved in maintaining the economies of other Eurozone states, predominantly ensuring that Spain and Greece's economies did not collapse. The recovery of the global economy in 2020 temporarily relieved pressure on Germany and the Eurozone. However, by 2025 renewed global conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans had once again put pressure on the euro. In August 2025, Greece and Serbia were ejected from the European Union after their annexations of Macedonia and Montenegro, respectively. This led to euro markets becoming extremely unstable as questions were raised about Greece's future in the euro. In September, France's Marine le Pen announced her country's unilateral withdrawal from the euro. This lead to Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy all withdrawing from the Eurozone. In January 2026, Germany drew the remaining Eurozone states into the 'Northern Euro', creating an economic sphere in eastern-central Europe, mostly under German guidance. Government and Politics Germany is a federal, parliamentary, representative democratic republic, operating under the framework laid out in the 1949 constitutional document called the 'Grundgesetz' (Basic Law). The President is the head of state and invested with representative responsibilities and powers. The Chancellor is the head of government and exercises executive power. Federal legislative power is vested in the Bundestag and Bundesrat, which form the legislature. The former is elected through direct proportional representation elections, while the latter represents the governments of the sixteen federated states. Germany is comprised of sixteen federal states, each with its own constitution and are largely autonomous. These states are: * Baden-Wurttemberg * Bavaria * Berlin * Brandenburg * Bremen * Hamburg * Hesse * Mecklenburg-Vorpommern * Lower Saxony * North Rhine-Westphalia * Rhineland-Palatinate * Saarland * Saxony * Saxony-Anhalt * Schleswig-Holstein * Thuringia Foreign Relations Germany is a member of the European Union, Eurozone and NATO, as well as the G-7, G-30 and many other institutions of global governance. Since reunification, Germany has maintained strong ties with all its neighbours and the United States. The development policy of Germany is an independent area of foreign policy. It is formulated by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and carried out by the implementing organisations. The German government sees development policy as a joint responsibility of the international community. It is the world's third biggest aid donor in 2009 after the United States and France. Economy Germany is the largest economy in the European Union with a strong industrial sector known for high quality machinery, top notch pharmaceuticals, superb automobiles and other high tech products. German multinational giant Siemens is one of the leading manufacturers of high tech machinery and high speed rail. Siemens linked the European HSR rail system to the Chinese built Pan-Asian High Speed Rail System, helping German manufacturers ship their products throughout Asia by land to the booming growth markets of China, South East Asia and India. Two way trade and investment between German "mitteleuropa" and the boom markets of Asia were the engine that created a Eurasia wide trade network in the 2020s. The increased automation of German factories increased the efficiency of German industry by over 50% by 2025 further fueling German economic growth. Around the same time, the proliferation of smart devices and the evolution of the internet helped German homes and business increase the efficiency of their operations and energy usage, fueling growth. German auto manufacturers have a reputation for being the best in the world. German car giants benefited from the integration of the Eurasian supercontinent in the 2020s, shipping their automobiles to the boom markets of Asia along the corridors of the Pan-Asian High Speed Rail System. The new middle class of the fast developing Asian economies had a preference for German cars. German auto giants like Daimler also helped lead he way in the development of cars with an autonomous driving option in the 2020s and 2030s, working with various governments and other multinational companies to overcome safety concerns. German autonomous vehicles used either Google's android operating system or a rival system developed by Finnish multinational Nokia. Germany hoped to remove non-autonomous vehicles from its major cities and autobahns by mid-century. Germany also hoped all new vehicles would be hydrogen or electric powered by this period. Some German cities had hydrogen powered buses as early as the 2010s. The Germans began constructing hydrogen fueling stations on mass in the 2030s, paving the way for a full transition to a hydrogen economy. By 2045, Germany had replaced all gasoline powered cars, buses and trucks on its roads with hydrogen powered vehicles. Germany was a major force in the burgeoning fields of robotics and cybernetics in the 2030s. Several new German firms designed the latest cybernetic eyes and cybernetic limbs which offered superior performance to their purely biological equivalents and competed with bioprinting for those who could afford them. Around the same time, the first androids were entering the market in the advanced industrial economies. The Gernans hoped to build a cyborg with an exterior indistinguishable from an ordinary human being by 2050 or 2060, blurring the line between man and machine. Germany also led the way in the adaption of alternative energy as part of a gradual transition towards a post-fossil fuel economy by 2050 or 2060. Another ambitious aspect of the transition towards a sustainable economy was the creation of a region wide smart grid managed by AI to coordinate energy usage on a continental scale. One aspect of this system involved piping clean solar power from North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula to Europe via HVDC cables developed by German firms stretching under the Mediterrean Sea and through Turkey. The European smart grid also involved tidal and wind farms in the Baltic Sea, the expansion of hydroelectric generation in the Alps and Scandavia and the replacement of many older nuclear power plants with modern fourth generation designs including small modular nuclear reactors and thorium plants. The completion of the European smart grid would take many decades but bring untold economic benefits to Germany and its neighbors. Category:Nations Category:Europe Category:European Union Category:NATO Category:OECD Category:G-30